Account number mix-up, missed deadline put $400 at risk

Don Edmans is diligent about reviewing his bank statements. This summer, he got a $400 reminder of why.
His story begins on June 12, when, he now knows, another member of the State Employees Federal Credit Union apparently skipped a digit as she punched in her account number while making a $397.04 payment by telephone. As a result, her newer six-digit account number turned into his older five-digit identification.

Edmans didn’t discover the error until mid-August because the post office in Delmar, where he lives most of the year, did not forward his bank statements to the summertime postal address he uses while at his camp on Galway Lake.
It might still remain undetected today if he hadn’t found the charge when he examined his account data electronically with help from the SEFCU staff in Glenville.
Then, when he went to his usual SEFCU branch in Glenmont on Aug. 21 to try to straighten out the mess, he was stunned to be told he was out of luck.
“They said they only give you 60 days and then, that’s it. ‘Sorry. We can’t do anything,’ ” he recalled.
Edmans, 57, spoke that day with a Delmar credit union employee, whose job title on her business card was “service professional,” and she consulted with a co-worker at the branch and with someone named Matt by telephone. Both confirmed the determination.
Edmans, a retired state Department of Motor Vehicles employee and part-time bartender, has been stewing about it ever since.
“I was absolutely furious,” he said, and right about now, that $400 would be nice to have on hand. “I’ve got school taxes to pay in a couple weeks. It would come in handy for that,” he said.
On the Glenmont SEFCU representative’s advice, Edmans also reached out to the company that was paid from his account, Consumer Portfolio Services, Inc. According to the company’s Web site, it is “an independent specialty finance company that provides indirect automobile financing to individuals with past credit problems, low incomes or limited credit histories.”
The company declined to reverse the transaction.
Next, he called the Advocate. It was my good fortune to connect with SEFCU chief marketing officer John DeCelle, and the error was corrected on Edmans’ account within hours.
“This is something that was easily fixable,” DeCelle told me, adding: “had Mr. Edmans asked to speak to a manager, this could have been resolved.”
Edmans was pleased to have the issue cleared up and the money returned to his account, but he notes that the experience has left him with lingering concerns about the institution he’s relied on for banking services for 30 years or more.
He’s bothered by SEFCU’s suggestion, as I am, that he contributed to the problem because he didn’t ask to speak with a manager in Glenmont.
How was he to know that the people the representative consulted were not managers? Why would he think that someone with the job title “service professional” would not be giving him the correct information?
“Three people were telling me it could not be done, so why did I have to ask for a manager?” Edmans asked me rhetorically. “I really resent that everyone has to see a manager when they don’t get what they want.”
According to DeCelle, there normally is a 60-day window for such errors to be rectified, and that’s why the staff member declined to adjust Edmans’ account. DeCelle would not specify exactly what it was about Edmans’ case that permitted the exception to be made.
“Our philosophy with our members is to be more-than fair,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that the Post Office did not forward the mail,” he said, and “this is why we make this information available through e-statements and online.”
That’s not so comforting if you’re a customer who’s not in the habit of checking your bank statements as carefully as Edmans does. And then, there’s the question of how this happened in the first place and whether it could happen again when someone makes a slip of the finger while typing in an account number.
Edmans worries that it could.
DeCelle insists that it is unlikely because of the way account numbers differ and because of specific safeguards against digit transposition errors. He declined to be more specific, citing security concerns.
“It’s a situation where one consumer gave a series of numbers. It was not the correct number, but it just happened to be another person’s account number,” DeCelle said. “It really is just an odd occurrence.”